The earliest OED citation for "duck tape" (in the modern sense) is from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 21 November 1902, and it says:

"Considering... that 100,000 yards of cotton duck tape must be wrapped around the cable [of the Williamsburg bridge] with neatness and exactitude, it may be imagined that this method of cable preservation is quite expensive."

"Duck" is a strong cotton fabric which duck tape is made from; it's also used to make sails and trousers. I don't know when it became a trademark in the US. "Duct tape" came later, around the 1970s; it is of course very often used to tape up cables in ducts.

Forgive, if you will, the brevity of today's Gentle Readers. I am in the midst of tidying the place we're leaving, and putting things into bags and boxes ready for the move. And though it's a small two-bedroom flat, it contains upwards of four thousand books, so the operation is taking most of my attention and energy. (Also, it caused some talk when I went into Sainsbury's and bought forty bags-for-life.)

I also apologise for the state of the website. We finish moving in on Tuesday (at least, I sincerely hope we do), and then I will have time to fix it. Video versions of Gentle Readers will also resume thereafter.

I have been reading Jeremy Taylor's Rules and Exercises of Holy Living, a sort of self-help book from 1650. Taylor talks about many of the same sorts of things as modern self-help books, including how to organise your time and how not to get distracted. In the section on time management he mentions that it's important to do something fun every day, because it refreshes your mind; he goes on to say that a good example of this is that St John the Apostle spent time each day with a tame partridge. This surprised me.

Gentle reader Amy Robinson requested a picture of St John spending quality time with his partridge, and I am happy to oblige:

A poem of mine

One of the interesting things about being a writer is that you find people talking about and using your work in ways you'd never considered. A few years after I wrote the poem below, I happened upon the website for a translation competition at a Russian university; the students had been set some texts by German writers whose names I didn't recognise, and James Thurber, and my poem. I love getting surprises like that.

TRANSLATION (T83)

Ah, would I were a German!I'd trouble my translatorWith nouns the size of HamburgAnd leave the verb till later.

And if I were a WelshmanMy work would thwart translationWith ninety novel pluralsIn strict alliteration.

And would I were Chinese!I'd throw them off their courseWith twelve unusual symbolsAll homophones of “horse”.

But as it is, I'm English:And I'm the one in hellBy writing in a languageImpossible to spell.

This is about as subtle as a brick, but Kipling knew his trade, and it still holds the beauty and jingle of a nursery rhyme. As with all the poems in Puck of Pook's Hill and Rewards and Fairies, it's attached to a story about Dan and Una in the original book; this story for this one is also called "Cold Iron", but unlike the poem, it concerns the iron taboo.

COLD IRONby Rudyard Kipling

"Gold is for the mistress — silver for the maid!Copper for the craftsman cunning at his trade.""Good!" said the Baron, sitting in his hall,"But Iron — Cold Iron — is master of them all!"

So he made rebellion 'gainst the King his liege,Camped before his citadel and summoned it to siege."Nay!" said the cannoneer on the castle wall,"But Iron — Cold Iron — shall be master of you all!"

Woe for the Baron and his knights so strong,When the cruel cannon-balls laid 'em all along!He was taken prisoner, he was cast in thrall,And Iron — Cold Iron — was master of it all!

Yet his King spake kindly (ah, how kind a lord!)"What if I release thee now, and give thee back thy sword?""Nay!" said the Baron, "mock not at my fall,For Iron — Cold Iron — is master of men all."

"Tears are for the craven, prayers are for the clown —Halters for the silly neck that cannot keep a crown.As my loss is grievous, so my hope is small,For Iron — Cold Iron — must be master of men all!"

Yet his King made answer (few such kings there be!)"Here is Bread and here is Wine — sit and sup with me.Eat and drink in Mary's name, the whiles I do recallHow Iron — Cold Iron — can be master of men all!"

He took the Wine and blessed It; He blessed and brake the BreadWith His own Hands He served Them, and presently He said:"Look! These Hands they pierced with nails outside My city wallShow Iron — Cold Iron — to be master of men all!

"Wounds are for the desperate, blows are for the strong,Balm and oil for weary hearts all cut and bruised with wrong.I forgive thy treason — I redeem thy fall —For Iron — Cold Iron — must be master of men all!"

"Crowns are for the valiant — sceptres for the bold!Thrones and powers for mighty men who dare to take and hold.""Nay!" said the Baron, kneeling in his hall,"But Iron — Cold Iron — is master of man all!Iron out of Calvary is master of men all!"

Colophon

Gentle Readers is published on Mondays and Thursdays, and I want you to share it. The archives are at http://thomasthurman.org/gentle/ , and so is a form to get on the mailing list. If you have anything to say or reply, or you want to be added or removed from the mailing list, I’m at thomas@thurman.org.uk and I’d love to hear from you. The newsletter is reader-supported; please pledge something if you can afford to, and please don't if you can't. Love and peace to you all.

Only yesterday I mentioned to Alice that I spent my first day in my school's Special Educational Needs Unit helping the teachers write limericks. In one of those weird synchronicity things, I found the limericks today in the back of a book of poetry, in Mrs Price's handwriting. Internal evidence dates it to 1987. I apologise to my siblings in general:

There was a young fellow called ThomasWho always showed plenty of promiseAt science he scoredAt PE was boredThat flourishing artist called Thomas

There was a young fellow named MarkWho went out for a bit of a larkHe jumped in the lakeWhile eating some cakeAnd got himself banned from the park

There was a young lady named Mandy (Amanda)Whose favourite food was candy.So into the shopWith a skip and a hopShe grabbed every sweet that was handy

There was a young fellow named AndrewWho's now reached the great age of two.He has two teddy bears.They both live upstairs.The real ones all live in the zoo.

Sometimes I hear people saying that they believe morality to be designed by God, and so they can't understand how atheists and agnostics can have an understanding of morality. This is not an argument I can easily get my head around. I mean, if we talk about languages for a moment, there's still no consensus on how humans as a whole started to speak. But it's still pretty obvious that individual humans learn language as they grow up from the people around them, that language exists by consensus, and that there are certain necessary features for language to be language. I don't see Esperantists going around telling everyone that they can't understand how we can speak English if we don't know who started Proto-Indo-European.

ETA: Then again, if the Esperantists did do that, I probably wouldn't understand too well anyway.

Still mostly tidying the house, preparing to move up to Salford. If all goes well, we'll be moving in a week today. Things haven't shown as much sign of going well as I'd like, though: a number of mishaps, ranging from the serious (someone driving into the back of our car) to the ridiculous (trying to pick up a beanbag when the fabric dissolved in my hands, and the floor filled with a million polystyrene beads) have made me wonder whether I'm actually a character in a sitcom.

I mentioned this to my brother Andrew, who said, "And have you noticed that when you sit down to dinner, people only sit on three sides of the table?" And he's right! I'm just hoping I won't close my eyes and see those ominous words...

Other than that, I've been setting up a Twitter account for Gentle Readers: @gentlereaders. Do follow it if you're on Twitter-- and, as ever, tell your friends.

A poem of mine

STATIONS OF THE CROSS

I watched from Farringdon as Satan fell;I've battled for my soul at Leicester Square;I've laid a ghost with Oystercard and bell;I've tracked the wolf of Wembley to his lair;I've drawn Heathrow's enchantment in rotation;at Bank I played the devil for his fare;I laugh at lesser modes of transportation.I change at Aldgate East because it's there.

The Waterloo and City cast its spell;I watched it slip away, and could not care,the Northern Line descending into helluntil King's Cross was more than I could bear;he left me there in fear for my salvation,a Mansion House in heaven to prepare:so why return to any lesser station?I change at Aldgate East because it's there.

Three days beneath the earth in stench and smellI lay, and let the enemy beware:I learned the truth of tales the children tell:an Angel plucked me homeward by the hair,to glory from the depths of condemnation,to where I started long ago from whereI missed my stop through long procrastination.I change at Aldgate East because it's there.

Prince of the buskers, sing your new creation:the change you ask is more than I can spare;a change of spirit, soul, imagination.I change at Aldgate East because it's there.

A picture

"Mind. The gap."

Something wonderful

Harry Beck (1902-1974) worked for London Transport as an electrical engineer. His great idea was born, as all great ideas are, by looking at something familiar and seeing it anew in terms of something quite different.

Unsurprisingly, Beck's bosses were sceptical. After all, it was an untested skunkworks project by someone without expertise in mapmaking. Nevertheless, he persuaded them to give the design a try. It proved so popular that it has been used in London ever since, as well as copied by countless other railway networks around the world.

In this way, Beck made daily life slightly easier for millions of commuters over nearly a century. Most of them have never heard his name.

Something from someone else

FROM A RAILWAY CARRIAGEby Robert Louis Stevenson

Faster than fairies, faster than witches,Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;And charging along like troops in a battle,All through the meadows the horses and cattle:All of the sights of the hill and the plainFly as thick as driving rain;And ever again, in the wink of an eye,Painted stations whistle by.

Here is a child who clambers and scrambles,All by himself and gathering brambles;Here is a tramp who stands and gazes;And there is the green for stringing the daisies!Here is a cart run away in the roadLumping along with man and load;And here is a mill and there is a river:Each a glimpse and gone for ever!

This is an old favourite. Like the best poetry, it evokes memories in everyone, similar but each different; like the best poetry, the sound of it is half the joy. Don't just sit there: read it aloud!

Colophon

Gentle Readers is published on Mondays and Thursdays, and I want you to share it. The archives are at http://thomasthurman.org/gentle/ , and so is a form to get on the mailing list. If you have anything to say or reply, or you want to be added or removed from the mailing list, I’m at thomas@thurman.org.uk and I’d love to hear from you. The newsletter is reader-supported; please pledge something if you can afford to, and please don't if you can't. Love and peace to you all.

You can send anything at allWith Alice's Protocol.You can send anything at allWith Alice's Protocol.Send your files from A to BJust email her and ask for her public keyYou can send anything at allWith Alice's Protocol.

Well, it all began when Alice tried to send a private message, a message that was private, to Bob. I don't know what Alice wanted to say to Bob, maybe she was just askin' him to take out the trash, but she knew it was private, so she encrypted the message with an encryption. Now Bob has this friend called Eve who's always hangin' around trying to eavesdrop on his conversations, I mean, she isn't droppin' from the eaves like a bat, she's listenin' at doors and windows and keyholes. So this time, instead of listenin' at doors and windows and keyholes, she intercepts the message, the message sent by Alice-- remember Alice?

I've been filling boxes with things— mostly books— ready to move up to Salford. We still don't know for sure that we have the house, but our time here in Surrey comes to an end in less than a fortnight. The Cat Yantantessera, who hates travelling, was happy to stay in the north with Kit's parents.

On Wednesday I paid my first visit to Nantwich, which is a pleasant town in Cheshire (rather than a tic affecting grandmothers). Most of the town burnt down in 1583, and Elizabeth I sent £1,000 to rebuild the town. The result is that most of the streets are filled with those black-and-white buildings for which the Tudors are renowned.

Nantwich. Photo by Jonathan White, public domain

I've also added another Saki story to my website: The Stalled Ox. As before, the story is both written down and read aloud. If you'd like a bedtime story, take a look! This time I've added some cartoons; I think I'll go back and do similarly for the other stories as well. What would you like next? I'm thinking of Sredni Vashtar.

And a friend of mine complains that in this weather the mosquitoes treat her as a hors d'oeuvres trolley. I can only suggest that she should shelter under a canapé.

A poem of mine

PUPPY DREAMS

My puppy always starts to growl as soon as he's asleep:"I've caught a hundred waterfowl and killed a thousand sheep;I felled and ate a buffalo, then swam across the sea,And when I found where squirrels go, I chased them up the tree!"And though his dreams are not the truth, who'll wake him up? Not I!I've firmly held it since my youth that sleeping dogs should lie.

Sometimes you read an idea which changes the way you view the world. For me, one such experience was reading about the work of Paul Grice (1913-1988). Grice studied what people try to achieve when they're having a conversation, and he reduced it to a set of rules of co-operation: rules that the person who's speaking generally tries to follow, and the people listening expect to hear followed. The four rules have become known as the Gricean maxims, and they are:

Quality: Speak the truth, as far as you know it.

Quantity: Include as much detail as required, but not more. For example, Alice asks, "Do you have any children?", and Bob replies, "I have two sons." Alice assumes from this that Bob has two children, both boys, because if Bob had daughters he would have mentioned them.

Relation: Be relevant. For example, Alice says, "Business has been slow today", and Bob replies, "It's raining." Bob doesn't have to add "...and people often don't go out when it's raining, so they won't get to visit this shop", because Alice assumes that what Bob says is relevant to the conversation.

Manner: Speak in the way people expect. This covers quite a few things: for example, we assume that people aren't being deliberately ambiguous.

The maxims become particularly interesting when you consider how they can break down. For example, equivocation— that is, saying carefully-chosen truths in order to deceive people— involves breaking the maxim of relation. And sometimes people assume the maxims are not being followed— for example, people under hostile cross-examination often have no reason to wish to cooperate, and so answer the question asked rather than the question intended.

Something from someone else

LOVE, DRINK, AND DEBTby Alexander Brome

I have been in love, and in debt, and in drink,This many and many a year; And those three are plagues enough, one would think,For one poor mortal to bear. 'Twas drink made me fall in love,And love made me run into debt, And though I have struggled and struggled and strove,I cannot get out of them yet.There's nothing but money can cure me, And rid me of all my pain;'Twill pay all my debts, and remove all my lets, And my mistress, that cannot endure me, Will love me and love me again—Then I'll fall to loving and drinking amain.

Love, drink, and debt are such evergreen concerns that this poem could have been written in Victorian times, or in the twentieth century, or yesterday! Only the rhyme of "love" with "strove" gives us the hint that it was written in the seventeenth century.

Colophon

Gentle Readers is published on Mondays and Thursdays, and I want you to share it. The archives are at http://thomasthurman.org/gentle/ , and so is a form to get on the mailing list. If you have anything to say or reply, or you want to be added or removed from the mailing list, I’m at thomas@thurman.org.uk and I’d love to hear from you. The newsletter is reader-supported; please pledge something if you can afford to, and please don't if you can't. Love and peace to you all.

We may have found a house. Or rather, we have found a house, but whether we get to live there is down to the whims of the credit check fairy. Nevertheless, we live in hope. I suspect the next fortnight at least will involve a lot of motorway travel and helping the movers, but at least it means I get to put the beautiful word "pantechnicon" to more use.

Gentle reader Timothy Hunt suggests that Yantantessera the cat gains her powers of disappearing by passing through the fourth dimension, in the manner of A Wrinkle in Time, and that her name is short for Yan Tan Tesseract. I have no reason to suspect this to be false. I also note that "tesseract" is an anagram of "reset cat", which surely can't be coincidence.

I have been making a page of stories on my website; each story is both read aloud and written down. At present there are two there, both by Saki; I'll add some of my own, and other people's, later. The next to be added will be Saki's The Stalled Ox, at the request of gentle reader Louise Etheridge; other suggestions of stories unencumbered by copyright are welcome.

Pittsburgh is a rather hilly town. I wrote this one while standing in a small park halfway up a steep hill overlooking the city centre, as night began to fall. You can hear me reading it if you like.

(T18) PITTSBURGH

This moment, I am God upon this town.I compass every window spread below:each pinprick point in total looking downa pattern only overseers know.I feel the human flow and ebb each minuteperceiving both with every passing breath;each lighted room has home and hoping in it,each darkening a sleeping, or a death. And nothing, nothing makes it wait to darken; had I the power it should be shining still. Some other one you have to hope will hearken, some other on some yet more lofty hill—whom priests and people plead to, not to beas powerless to hold these lights as me.

A picture

Human: "What are you doing in my underwear drawer?"

Raptor: "Looking for thermals."

Something wonderful

The ambition of Edmund Clerihew Bentley was to get a first at Oxford. When he didn't manage to do so, he devoted his energies instead to an attempt to get his middle name into the dictionary. He invented a verse form named the "clerihew", and published a collection of them,Biography for Beginners, which was enough of a success that he achieved his lexicographical aim. That book helpfully begins

The art of Biography

Is different from Geography.

Geography is about maps,

But Biography is about chaps.

The clerihew has four lines, rhymed aabb; it generally begins with the name of its subject, and it is in roughly conversational metre. Another of Bentley's examples which shows their usual surreality:

I do not extenuate Bunyan'sIntemperate use of onions,But if I knew a wicked ogressI would lend her "The Pilgrim's Progress."

Since then, many others have been written: here are some to be going on with. Feel free to send in your own compositions. And let me know: if you decided to get your name into the dictionary, what would you invent?

Something from someone else

UP-HILL

by Christina Rossetti

Does the road wind up-hill all the way?

— Yes, to the very end.

Will the day’s journey take the whole long day?

— From morn to night, my friend.

But is there for the night a resting-place?

— A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.

May not the darkness hide it from my face?

— You cannot miss that inn.

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?

— Those who have gone before.

Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?

— They will not keep you standing at that door.

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?

— Of labour you shall find the sum.

Will there be beds for me and all who seek?

— Yea, beds for all who come.

In Chesterton's phrase, the decent inn of death.

Colophon

Gentle Readers is published on Mondays and Thursdays, and I want you to share it. The archives are at http://thomasthurman.org/gentle/ , and so is a form to get on the mailing list. If you have anything to say or reply, or you want to be added or removed from the mailing list, I’m at thomas@thurman.org.uk and I’d love to hear from you. The newsletter is reader-supported; please pledge something if you can afford to, and please don't if you can't. Love and peace to you all.